Iran threatens Stargate AI data centers amid regional conflict

Iran has warned of further attacks on data centers across the Middle East in response to ongoing threats and air strikes from the United States. The Iranian military has issued direct threats against Stargate, a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to build AI data centers. This warning follows recent missile strikes in the region, where Iranian missiles struck Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in Bahrain and an Oracle data center in Dubai. The threat against Stargate was delivered via a video released late last week and shared widely on Sunday. The video, featuring Iranian military spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari, showed an image of a globe zooming in on the Stargate data center. In the video, Zolfaghari stated, “nothing stays hidden to our sight, though hidden by Google.”

The Stargate initiative, which was announced in January 2025, originally struggled to get off the ground due to alleged funding troubles and costs associated with tariffs, prompting plans to expand with new data centers internationally. Now, the $500 billion joint venture is caught in a broader geopolitical conflict between the United States and Iran. The escalation intensified after U.S. President Trump threatened to strike Iran’s civilian infrastructure, like power plants and water desalination plants, by the end of Tuesday if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping channel, has choked global supply-chain traffic since the start of the war in February. Several data centers in the region have already been hit by missiles as a result of the war.

In response to these U.S. actions, Iran’s military said that if the U.S. went ahead with its threats to hit its civilian infrastructure, the country would retaliate with its own strikes against the U.S.’ energy and tech infrastructure in the region. The situation remains highly volatile as Iran has also threatened tech companies including Nvidia and Apple by name last week. The explicit targeting of these companies and regional data centers signals that critical technology infrastructure has become a primary focus in the ongoing military standoff.

Why it matters

The targeting of the Stargate data center marks a dangerous escalation where critical AI infrastructure is becoming a direct pawn in the geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and Iran.